Tagua, a generic boardgame for KDE, is approaching version 1.0, and the developers decided it's time to get the word out on this exceptionally cool application by releasing a first Alpha. Read on for more!

A little less than two years ago, Paolo Capriotti started developing KBoard, a generic application supporting all kinds of board games. His intent was to create a definitive platform that would make it easy to develop board games and variants. After some time, Maurizio Monge joined the project, contributing with exceptionally innovative ideas. Development got a big boost after aKademy 2007, and currently it doesn't even seem to compare to the old KBoard anymore. The name was thus changed to the more original and less boring "Tagua".

Tagua smoothly in action

The current status

The Free Software world doesn't have a decent, good looking Chess game which is properly network aware, so Tagua is focusing heavily on good looks and online play. Being a generic board game, this of course also benefits all other games built upon it. And boy, does it look good. Everything is animated smoothly, pieces explode, and the move history is very fun to play with. The theme engine is very powerful, so hopes are high that artists will create some great looking things.

Currently it features 2 games (Chess and Shogi) and some variations on them, like 5x5 chess and simpleshogi. But it is very easy to write new games (the 5x5 chess is just 20 lines of simple code) so this is expected to change as well.

Online playing is possible, but some work is still to be done on the usability front. And playing against the AI is already implemented, it just lacks a GUI. So, we can expect some improvements still, but the game is already very playable, and it's time for users to start submitting new themes and implement new games! The developers have promised that the best ones will be shipped with KDE 4, so gonuts.

When you mentioned the word "boardgame" my eyes went immediately wide open. I thought about the thousand boardgames that are listed in boardgamegeek.com . I thought about playing "Settlers of catan", Carcassone, and others, like in www.brettspielwelt.de . But you only think of chess and checkers! Well, it's a beginning, though it could get better. *Much* better.

I must be the only one on the planet who finds Settlers extremely disappointing. Other than the fact that it allows me to shout "I have wood for sheep!" it is too simplistic for my taste. I might prefer network play, but when you play with your buddies, you learn their strategies (who goes for longest road, who tries for armies, etc) and what you should or shouldn't trade them.

Personally, I'd love to see huge, extremely dynamic games like Talisman get ported someday.